


Going Places

by Sandoz (Sandoz_Iscariot17)



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: 1940s, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Motherhood, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-20
Updated: 2010-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:12:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandoz_Iscariot17/pseuds/Sandoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally adjusts to the idea of motherhood. (Warning: contains brief mention of sexual assault)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Places

**Author's Note:**

> Watchmen belongs to Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and DC Comics.

The doctor delivers the punch line while Sally sits, back rigid and hands folded neatly in her lap as if she were holding still for a picture, and she laughs only once. Its echo carries her all the way back to her penthouse on the wheels of a taxi.

That Eddie. What a card.

Sally’s eyes are fastened to her reflection in the bathroom’s full-length mirror. She unties the cord around her waist, letting the black kimono slip from her shoulders. A good body, she thinks, even if she hasn’t worn the costume in years ( _when he cupped her breasts and looked into her eyes he made her feel nineteen again, and it was only then she realized just how much she missed being Silk Spectre, missed_ him), soon to be sagging and bloated and branded with the white lines of stretch marks.

“You’ve done it now, Sal,” she tells the reflection, turning with a whip of her hair to fill the bathtub with steaming water. She can’t lie, not when she hasn’t touched Larry in months, and jokes lose their humor when you have to explain them. But she can handle Larry. At least the ring on her finger will make it easier.

( _And she remembers being eighteen and half-naked and listening to Mona the Magnificent’s crying in the dressing room. The black balls on her Spanish hat danced with every sob._

“Of course Joey’ll marry you,” Loretta said, looking like a mother hen with Mona in her arms and feathers in her hair. Sally stood back, preferring to look at the naked mannequin with a g-string around its neck or the empty cold cream jar stuffed with cigarette butts instead of the unfolding melodrama.

Knocked up by a two-bit comic in a spinning bowtie, shackled to some joker for the rest of your life—those things happened to girls like Mona, but Sally was going places.)

Sally pours the bath salts. The water turns a cloudy, milky green. One foot steps in, then the other; the water’s hot enough to boil a lobster, but she sinks in without pause. Tense muscles relax; Sally arches her back, her belly fully submerged. Can the kid feel this, she wonders, the warm safety of the bath? Can it feel anything yet?

It’s too early to think about names or nurseries, to imagine if the baby will have her red curls or if she’ll see Eddie reflected at her every day. Sleepless nights will come and she’ll remember fists cracking her ribs and be afraid for the baby who is half of him. But for now the baby isn’t Larry’s or Eddie’s, Mona the Magnificent’s or anyone else’s. She belongs only to Sally Jupiter. ( _The thought fills her, makes her strong; it’ll be with her when Larry screams about divorce, when Laurel Jane stands in front of that same bathroom mirror wearing scant yellow fabric and an embarrassed look, and when she sees Eddie on the steps of Nelson’s mansion and tells him not to touch Laurel, never to touch her_.)

For now there’s nothing to fear from the father. No dark inheritance. It’ll take after its mother, of course. Sally leans back, resting her head against cool white tiles. She hopes it can feel the warm water. She hopes it feels like reassurance.

 _Stick with me, kiddo. We’re going places._


End file.
